Aaron Robertson The Black Utopians Hardback Book

Renewed my faith in the human power to resist, imagine and make new, better worlds. Susanna Crossman, author of Home Is Where We StartHow do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in other words, does utopia look like in black?These questions animate Aaron Robertsons exploration of Black Americans efforts to remake the conditions of their lives. Writing in the tradition of Saidiya Hartman and TaNehisi Coates, Robertson makes his way from his ancestral hometown of Promise Land, Tennessee, to Detroit the city where he was born, and where one of the countrys most remarkable Black utopian experiments got its start. Founded by the brilliant preacher Albert Cleage Jr., the Shrine of the Black Madonna combined Afrocentric Christian practice with radical social projects. Central to this endeavour was the Shrines chancel mural of a Black Virgin and child, the icon of a nationwide liberation movement that would come to be known as Black Christian Nationalism. Alongside the Shrines story, Robertson reflects on a diverse array of Black utopian visions, from the Reconstruction era through the countercultural fervour of the 1960s and 1970s and into the present day. By doing so, Robertson showcases the enduring quest of collectives and individuals for a world beyond the constraints of systemic racism. The Black Utopians is the story of a movement and of a world still in the making one that... | Aaron Robertson The Black Utopians Hardback Book